


Guinevere's Gift

by OverlyObsessedFangirl1



Series: Fractured Fairy Tales [4]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 11:40:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15818151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverlyObsessedFangirl1/pseuds/OverlyObsessedFangirl1





	1. In Which We Meet Princess Guinevere

      "Guinevere! Guinevere, darling?“

      "In here, Mum!”

      “Guinevere, what are you doing? The king will be here any minute!”

      Guinevere sighed. She put down her paintbrush and turned to see her mother.

      “Which one is it this time?” she asked.

      Her mother opened Guinevere’s wardrobe and started rummaging for a clean dress. She did not answer until after she had selected one.

      “King Arthur Pendragon,” she said, now trying to get her daughter out of her paint smock.

      “Aw, Mum, could I not just stay in here?” Guinevere moaned, struggling. “He is so full of himself, and I would much rather paint.”

      “No, dear, you must join us at dinner. And,” she added as she yanked the gown over Guinevere’s head, “no snide comments, complaints, or mention of…of…that thing you can do, understand?”

      “Fine,” Guinevere mumbled, allowing her mother to yank her hair into an elaborate up-do and cram a tiara on top. “But if he starts going off again about how _amazing_ he is-”  
      “ _No_ , Guinevere,” said the queen firmly.

* * *

  
      “And that is how I defeated the Black Knight, single-handed,” concluded King Arthur, taking a swig of wine.

      “Fantastic,” said the queen, nudging Guinevere with her foot.

      Guinevere, who had been using her fork to draw in her potatoes, looked up.

      “Yes, wonderful,” she mumbled.

      “I am amazing, aren’t I?” asked King Arthur, beaming.

      Guinevere caught her mother’s eye and quickly ate her taters.

      “We are so pleased that you have honored us with your presence, Sire,” began the queen. “Perhaps you would like-”

      “Oh, that reminds me of another tale,” the king exclaimed. “You see, I had just returned from battling a dragon, you see, and…”

      As he droned on, Guinevere grew drowsy, and before long she had slipped into a sort of trance. She did not realize that she was absentmindedly using the water from her glass to draw on the table.

      Before the queen could register what her daughter was doing, a dragon silently landed outside the window. It looked in at the king, and roared.

      The window shattered. Guinevere’s trance was broken; she looked in horror at what she had drawn. A dragon just like the one outside was on the table,spewing flame at a figure that looked suspiciously like the king across from her. She tried to quickly rub out the picture, but it was too late. It was like an invisible being had gone over it with a burning stylus; the picture was branded into the wood.

      King Arthur looked up in surprise. He dove out of the way just as the beast’s barbed tail raked through the dining hall. It roared again, and breathed a column of fire into the sky. The king grabbed a sword from a nearby suit of armor and hurled it at the dragon. It glanced off of the creature’s belly with a shower of sparks.

      Guinevere was yanked out of the range of destruction. She looked up to see her mother’s face inches from hers. The queen looked furious.

      “What have you done?” she hissed. “I told you not to do precisely this!”

      “I didn’t mean to, I promise!” Guinevere protested. “He was talking about dragons, and I drifted off, and I guess I drew a dragon without realizing it!”

      “Well, fix it!”

      A shout interrupted them. The queen glanced up, and her eyes widened. She shoved her daughter out of the way as a jet of flame shot past.

      Guinevere yanked aside a tapestry that covered a hidden staircase. She dashed up toward her chambers, the fight echoing behind her.

      She burst into her art room, and snatched up a stylus. Quickly she outlined a sketch of the dragon lying on the ground, a sword in the one weak spot that dragons have; a small chink in their armor, at the base of their throat. As she drew, the screams and roars faded, another trance falling upon her. Within what felt like moments, but could have very well been hours, she laid down her stylus and gazed upon the finished piece.

      A dragon, so detailed it looked like it might fall out of the paper, lay dead on the ground, and a very battered man was pulling his sword out of the beast’s trachea, one foot on the great creature to help give leverage. Men lay dead around those two main figures. As she looked closer, Guinevere noticed that the lone man was the very man whom she had drawn the dragon killing in her previous drawing. Shaking her head sadly, she returned to the dining hall.

      To her dismay, the scene that awaited her was the exact same as the one that she had just left. Two dozen men lay dead in the smoldering courtyard. King Arthur was trying (unsuccessfully) to yank his sword out of the beast’s neck.

      Guinevere walked over to where her mother stood, near the gaping hole in the wall.

      “I am so sorry,” Guinevere said.

      Her mother gazed stiffly ahead.

      “Truly, I am,” Guinevere tried again. “I did not mean-”

      “I know you did not,” the queen interrupted softly. “But that does not excuse what happened here tonight. I expect you to be able to control this, Guinevere, because if you can’t, then I will have no choice but to call in a professional to deal with you.”

      Tears filled the young princess’s eyes. “Yes, Mother,” she choked out. She did not want to be subjected to tests, to have physicians and magicians try to figure out this strange gift and how to rid her of it. It was part of her, and (she suspected) the source of her great ability to paint, even though her paintings never came to life like her sketches.


	2. In Which The World As Princess Guinevere Knows It Falls To Pieces

"Well," said King Arthur, abandoning his attempt to withdraw his sword from the beast's throat, "that was exciting."

The young princess glanced at her mother. The queen looked faint, but she gave herself a little shake and her mask of unruffled calm fell back into place.

"That was very brave, Your Majesty," she said. "Very courageous. Thank you so very much for protecting us and slaying that foul beast."

"Yes, we are indebted to you," piped up Guinevere, in response to having her foot stepped on by her mother.

"You are very welcome," responded Arthur, briskly, which Guinevere thought was rather unlike him. "But if we could get to the matter for which I came?"

"Of course," Queen Brenhinol replied, gliding over to what remained of the dining table.

About half of the grand table remained. The polished cherry surface was charred from the dragon's flame, and had deep groves gouged into the surface from the beast's barbed tail.

Queen Brenhinol offered King Arthur the only chair that had somehow managed to remain untouched by the dragon attack. The king ignored her.

"My dear Princess Guinevere," he began, somewhat nervously, "you are the most beautiful maiden in the land. You are the sweetest, kindest, fairest lady I have ever come across in all of my many, wondrous travels and adventures. With such a charming maid by my side, no one would dare to attack Camelot, for fear of ruining that whom resembles Venus, the goddess of love herself, whom the other kingdoms worship. Dear, sweet Guinevere, will you please do me the honor of becoming my queen?" He asked the last part by partially kneeling in the rubble, the wooden splinters and broken stone discouraging him from kneading fully, as it might ruin his exquisite and expensive breeches.

Guinevere paled. She felt the world which she had grown up in shatter around her. She looked pleadingly at her mother for help. The queen smiled and nodded encouragingly. Guinevere turned back to the king. She knew that she really had no choice, that the proposal was merely a formality at this point, that if he was proposing, then her mother and the king had arranged this months ago, working out the details as the date of his arrival grew nearer.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she nodded.

"Yes, My Lord, I will marry you."


End file.
